How do I transfer large amount of photos/videos to iCloud?

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Level 1

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How do I transfer large amount of photos/videos to iCloud?

Here's the thing. I have a Macbook Air 256 GB and a NAS with about 1.5 TB photos and home videos. I just upgraded to 2TB iCloud in order to store all this in the cloud. I can't seem to figure out how to upload all that content. The current photos work just fine as they simply pass from the phone to the cloud.

I can only think of importing chunks of my data to the 80GB remaining on the MacBook and upload them like this. That would, however, take many weeks to complete and I do have other things to do.

What can I do?

MacBook Air (2020 or later)

Posted on Jun 23, 2021 5:53 AM

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Answer 1

matthias0210 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 23, 2021 11:02 AM in response to léonie

Thank for taking the time to reply, léonie! I thought of that too, loading the Library to an external drive. I'm a bit scared of what will happen with the pictures I have already on iCloud if I switch the "System Photo Library". My understanding is, only one lib can be the system lib which is the one that syncs to iCloud. If I create a new lib with the stuff on the NAS it could either delete all content from iCloud as the source is now different, or it could try to merge the existing lib with this new one into one humungous one. Neither sound attractive.

How does Windows sync iCloud photo libraries. Obviously there's not photos app for Windows. Does anyone know? Maybe this is a workaround? My work computer is a Windows PC, so I could give that a try.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,531 points

Jun 23, 2021 6:37 AM in response to matthias0210

To upload the photos and videos to iCloud the fastest way would be to import them to a Photos Library.

This cannot be done with the library on your small system volume, and it cannot be done with the library on a NAS. You need a different external volume, plugged directly into the MacBook Air, formatted and prepared as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

It may not work however, if your other devices are low on free storage. An iCloud Photos Library is used for keeping the Photos Libraries on all devices in sync and identical, not primarily to save storage on your devices. Even if you are using "Optimise Storage" for iCloud, Photos will need some local storage on the devices for the optimised versions for browsing. On my devices the iCloud Photos Library is using roughly 10% to 20% of the size of the library in iCloud, even with Optimise Storage enabled. If you are keeping a Photos Library of 1.6 TB in iCloud, you should expect to need at least 160GB on your Mac and on your iPhone or iPad, maybe more. For example, my rather small iCloud Photos Library of 230GB is using 43GB on my smallest Mac, where I am forced to use "Optimise Mac Storage".

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How do I transfer large amount of photos/videos to iCloud?

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